1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved user interface for computers, and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for increasing the speed and case with which a user can select and interact with computer applications and information.
2. Background of the Invention
Computers have vastly increased their ability to process information. Many computers now include one or more powerful microprocessors. Multitasking operating systems have given the computer the ability to execute more than one application at a time. Application programs have taken advantage of this increased computing power, and as a result, have become more graphic intensive.
The size of standard computer terminals (e.g., a 19 inch monitor) has become a limiting factor in presenting processed information to the user. A standard desktop computer now has the capability to inundate the display terminal of the computer with information. The computer industry has attempted several approaches to overcome this problem.
The most common approach has been window based software. Windowing systems attempt to maximize the use of the screen space of a display terminal by providing overlapping windows and icons. The window operating environment, although useful, is often frustrating to operate. The user is required to spend an inordinate amount of time moving, resizing, and opening and closing various windows and icons on the display space. The opening and closing of a window is often slow. Overlapping windows can be aggravating to the eye. It is also difficult to manipulate information within windows. The physical size of the display terminal limits the size of each window, the number of windows that can be displayed at a given time, and, in the case of graphic intensive applications, is often too small to display an image of an object in its entirety.
Another approach to increasing the display surface area of a computer is to simply use a larger monitor. Several companies are marketing twenty-eight (28) inch diagonal monitors. These extra-large monitors do increase the display capabilities of the computer to some degree, but the problems outlined above are still present. These monitors are also prohibitively expensive to build and difficult to ship to customers. One such monitor currently on the market weighs over two hundred pounds and is more than thirty inches deep. This monitor is clearly impractical for standard desktop computers.
Virtual reality systems represent yet another approach to increasing the display area of a computer. It is believed a virtual reality system was first described by Ivan Sutherland, a co-inventor of the parent application of the present application, in a seminal article entitled "A head-mounted three dimensional display", AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Volume 33, 1968. This article describes an imaging pipeline, including: a database for storing all the data, relationships and objects that are relevant to a model to be displayed; a position sensor for selecting a view point of the model to be displayed; a transformer for traversing the database, extracting the appropriate data to generate the model from the selected view point, and transforming it on the fly to a display format; a frame buffer for storing the transformed data; and the head mounted display for displaying the data stored in the frame buffer. The virtual reality system thus provides the user with a head-motion parallax: when the user moves his or her head, the view seen through the head mounted display unit changes as it would in real life.
Another approach to increasing the effective size of the visual space upon which graphic objects such as windows can be placed is to make the view space in which those objects can be placed larger than the screen and to place a map on the screen representing the various parts of that expanded desktop. The user can then select a given portions of that expanded desktop by clicking the mouse on the corresponding portion of the desktop map. While this can be useful, it requires the user to perform mouse operations to access different portions of the view space, which take time and which can be difficult if his computer does not have mouse or if he, or his hands, are not in situation in which using a mouse is convenient. In the mobile computing made possible by smaller computers and displays, traditional computer mice are often difficult and awkward to use, and other methods of selecting and interacting with computing objects are desirable.